A place for traditional noter and drone style Appalachian dulcimer players and beginners. Feel free to post your comments and questions at the end of each post by clicking on "comments". Welcome, friend!

Saturday, June 20, 2009

It has great fun lyrics. I especially love the imagery of honey bees swarming around her sweet mouth, her 'feet all over the floor', and of Cindy shaking her stockings down in a fit of Glorious Fervor!...

I have tabbed it in G, in reverse ionian tuning of DGD. Personally, I can sing it more comfortably in A, and I would choose the reverse ionian tuning of EAE for myself. Then again, if you don't plan to sing it at all, then feel free to play it in D, in a regular DAA ionian tuning. Any of these ionian tunings will use the exact same tab numbers, as I've written, so feel free to experiment! As is often the case with very quaint old songs, it also sounds nice without the 5th in the drones, in a more 'unison' sounding ionian tuning of say GGD (for G) or DDA (for D).

Now, if you want a real treat, watch this absolutely marvelous clip of Pete Seeger on banjo and Buffy Sainte-Marie on the mouth bow playing and singing Cindy. Don'cha just love it?? Notice how the mouth bow adds a single tonic drone note that plays continuously through the whole song. Ahhh....drones are such a total turn on! Buffy, you 'slay' me...what a woman!

When singing Cindy, it can get a little busy sounding going from verse to chorus to verse to chorus etc without a pause, so I'd recommend doing a verse, then sing the chorus, then play the chorus again but without singing, then on to the next verse, repeating this pattern. That would sound very pretty and add some needed 'air space'. As with almost all old-time and traditional songs, lyrics will vary in different versions.

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strumelia

WELCOME!...Click on the "continue reading..." link under each post to see the whole post with all its TAB and pictures. IF YOU ARE A BEGINNER, IT'S BEST TO READ THIS BLOG FROM THE BEGINNING, where I explain the very basic ideas and methods, and where I post the very simplest TAB songs to help get a beginner started. This blog was started on Feb 14th 2009. Look right below here TO CLICK ON THE POSTS SORTED BY DATE, and read posts from the earliest dates forward. You can click on any previous month, and that will bring up a page showing all the posts from that month. If you click on a picture or TAB of a song it will get BIGGER so you can see it more clearly and you can PRINT OUT THE TAB for your personal home practice use. Thanks for visiting!